To Break His Crown
by ice cream soup
Summary: Sometimes the worst dreams of all are the ones where all your dreams come true. Oneshot.


Rolling, tossing his body like the waves that tumbled outside against the hull of the boat, Marik's every movement seemed to be wrestling against the cotton blankets that clung to his bare skin as he felt the hazy edges of darkness close around him, like tentacles that threatened to drag his waterlogged mind down under.

He never much enjoyed sleeping.

Whenever he was asleep, he was trapped, in the dark, unable to know what was going on in the outside world; it was a lot like living underground, he thought.

As if he could sleep in the middle of such a turbulent storm, anyways. He could hear the first lashes of rain battering against the window of the boat like the first rounds of gunfire—it was one of those storms that started suddenly and ended suddenly, when the sky seemed laughing mad and so full of life that it was almost frightening.

Finally remembering to close his eyes, Marik shifted onto his side in the bed, placing his cheek on the cool side of the pillow. The thought of actually having to go to sleep scratched incessantly against his nerves, like so many iron nails and finger nails and thumb tacks and sharp, stupid-stupid words that kept bouncing in his head.

_Justgotosleepjustgotosleep. Don'tdreamdon'tdreamdon'tdreamdon't. Don'tsleep._

"Master Marik."

With a jolt, Marik shot up in bed at the sound of Rishid's voice, blinking away the dregs of drowsiness that had almost begun to settle on his person. His body felt terrible and turned inside-out—his throat was bone-dry, and his skin was slicked with icy sweat.

"Sorry if I woke you," Rishid apologized with a brusque bow, just a fuzzy shrouded figure standing in the center of the room, "but it's urgent. The pharaoh was found and is being held on the top deck."

"Say no more." Marik vaulted gratefully out of the bed, Millennium Rod suddenly in his hand. He was fully clothed. That the pharaoh was on his ship came off as a little strange to him, but as he rushed out of his room, he quickly forgot about it.

Finally, finally, revenge would be his—revenge, and the pharaoh's power, and all of the freedom that came with it. Heart pounding in his ears and feet pounding on the floor, Marik bounded up the stairs that would take him to the top deck and to meet his enemy face-to-face for the very first time.

He felt his foot catch on one of the stairs and pitched forward abruptly, but rather than making impact on the metal floor, he found himself pressing a gun against the pharaoh's temple.

The man was clad head-to-toe in golden jewelry as he sat bound to a chair, ocean-misted wind riffling through his spiked hair, head held regally high despite the unwieldy, towering red-and-white crown that weighed it down.

"Before I kill you," Marik whispered, bending towards the pharaoh's ear, "tell me—tell me why you needed to do it."

Eyes cold and unblinking, the pharaoh said nothing. Finger tightening on the trigger, Marik twisted the barrel of the gun against the man's forehead, for a moment absorbed in the way it pinched the skin.

"Why did you need to keep us in the dark? Why did you need Father to hurt me just to serve you, and then have him killed like a dog?"

Because Father really did love Marik and wouldn't have dug the knife into his back if he had a choice he wouldn't have he really wouldn't have really.

But the son-of-a-bitch pharaoh still wouldn't say anything—he just sat there, straight-backed and staring ahead and so fucking _royal_ and high-and-mighty and above it all. He was all that Marik had to blame; he blinked, and the pharaoh was just a sitting statue like the ones at the entrances of Egyptian temples; he was a crumbling limestone statue that Marik just pretended was a man that he could blame; he was a statue and Marik blinked and then he wasn't.

"_Answer me!_" Marik snarled, grabbing the man by the hair with his free hand, the crown toppling to the deck floor with a pretty clattering noise, breaking off into two pieces that skittered across the floorboards.

"Do you even have any idea of the lives you've ruined? Do you even _care_?" He wrenched the pharaoh's head round to face him, ready to put the sweet, sweet bullet into the ignorant royal's brain, a smile stretching out on his lips so wide that it hurt.

"Marik, don't!"

Blinking at the woman's voice that rang out to him, Marik looked down to see that the pharaoh had disappeared, leaving nothing but an empty chair.

Clenching his teeth, he wheeled around to see Ishizu. She stood as he had always remembered her, sad-tilted eyes blue as the ocean and full of a forgiveness that was just as expansive.

But she was still a traitor.

"Where did you hide him?" he growled at his sister, though he didn't seem surprised that she was there. "I was so close to setting all of us free!"

Ishizu—sad, sad, Ishizu—shook her head.

"I cannot let you hurt the pharaoh."

Narrowing his eyes, Marik muttered, "For gods' sakes, I'll never understand why you decided to side with him."

Ishizu extended a hand out towards him, fingers outstretched insistently. "Marik, why don't you turn back?" she pleaded. "You're not a killer."

But she wasn't talking to the right Marik. She thought that she was still talking to the once-upon-a-time little brother who spun her white flower necklaces and would have actually taken her hand. Wrong, Ishizu; you're wrong.

Rishid was suddenly by Marik's side with his own gun in hand, and with a decisive nod from his master, shot her.

One round. Right in the heart. Marik ordered him to shoot their sister, and he didn't feel bad about it at all, and Rishid didn't hesitate at all. Because Marik _was_ a killer, and Rishid would always kill for Marik if he had to. Rishid would kill himself and follow Marik into hell, if he had to. So he shot her.

She crumpled to the ground, just a pool of white cloth and no blood.

Sister or not, Marik wouldn't let anything stand in his way.

Scanning the deck floor, he frowned; he could only find one half of the pharaoh's crown—the red half that typically would have encircled the other white half like a bloody collar.

Where was the other piece? It would make him king, give him all the power he needed he needed the whole crown he needed _he needed_.

"Rishid, help me look for the white part—it has to be around here somewhere."

As if from an outside perspective, Marik saw himself fall to his hands and knees, searching for the missing piece, fingers scrabbling, looking pathetic.

"…Rishid? You there?"

He was answered by a heavy, bone-knocking thud and leapt to his feet, spinning around to see Rishid's body spilt on the ground.

Stepping over the man's prone figure was a darkened shadow. In his hand was the Millennium Rod, glinting gold and red with a steady drip-drip sound, and in his other hand was the white half of the crown.

"I believe," said dark-Marik—because that was who the man was—with a languid tongue, "that you have something of mine." He pointed the Millennium Rod to the red piece that the other, weak-Marik held onto.

Weak-Marik backed away a little, glancing side-to-side as if he suddenly wasn't sure where he was. "Who are you?"

Oh, but he already knew who dark-Marik was—he knew dark-Marik from the moment dark-Marik was born. But, like the feeling of his Father's back being torn open by his own hands, dark-Marik was just a far-off nightmare that always ended up being forcibly forgotten.

With slow, silky laughter, dark-Marik walked right up to weak-Marik, and breathed coldly on his face as he spoke. "I'm strong."

"I'm powerful."

"I'm fearless."

"I'm a murderer."

"I'm Marik."

Weak-Marik shoved the shadow back.

"No you're not," he said, "because you're not real."

With a surge of rage, dark-Marik immediately raised the Millennium Rod and sunk the golden dagger into weak-Marik's chest.

He struggled, he sputtered, he sprayed blood, he fell limp—all while dark-Marik chanted as if to assure himself, "_I'm_ real. You're not. You don't exist. I'm the only one who does."

Dark-Marik was really doing both of them a favor when he killed weak-Marik, and tossed his flimsy corpse over the boat railing.

Because all the weak-Marik ever wanted was to _not_ be weak, and to make that happen he had to stop being Marik.

Grinning, strong-Marik took up the red half of the crown that the weak-Marik had left behind, and combining it with the white half, placed it on his head.

There was nothing that could stand in his way now.

And, laughing uncontrollably, Marik opened his eyes and sat up in bed with a sharp inhale.

No longer smiling, his shoulders shook as he breathed heavily and ran a hand across his dampened face.

Glancing at the sunny boat window, he saw that the storm had cleared—along with the night. He checked his alarm clock to see that he had only slept for about an hour. Fuck.

Though, as he exhaled to steady himself and slipped out of bed, he knew he really couldn't have expected any better.

Marik never had good dreams.

Marik never dreamt that he had his family back—couldn't. For him, it was just physically impossible.

There are dreams—ambitions, goals, aspirations, hopes—something that can be worked towards and be made a warm, touchable reality.

Then there are wishes.

There are the impossible, the unattainable, the smiling mother and father in a floating house in the sky.

Wishes are a distraction, a waste.

And, like the many things that Marik know are buried and coldly decaying underground, wishes are dead.

So he dreamed for the best thing he could ever hope to get—murder, revenge, and a life where nobody could hold him back from what he wanted.

Marik never much enjoyed sleeping.

He pulled his shirt on and finger-combed his hair as he made his way to the top deck, buckling on his dark cloak, steps brisk and purposeful as he left any remnants of sleep far behind him. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on the railing and stared at the horizon, trying to shake off the unease that prickled feverishly in the corners of his mind.

"Good morning, Master Marik," came Rishid's voice from behind him. For a moment, a rush of images flashed through his mind—accompanied by the remembered sounds of gunshots—and Ishizu's voice— and pain in his chest—before they all slipped away like water into veined cracks. Whatever it was, it was already forgotten.

"How much longer?" Marik asked, mouth twitching upwards in anticipation.

Dutifully, Rishid replied, "We should be reaching Battle City a little after noon."

"Good."

Basking in the sunrise and the rush of wind in his face, the teen already began planning ahead, visualizing scenarios where the pharaoh would lie defeated at his feet, and the last of his ill feelings from the night before ebbed from his mind.

It was the funniest thing, really; Marik never could remember his dreams.


End file.
